Since old Purdue IDs were ruled invalid for Tippecanoe County polling places, University Senate will ask Purdue to offer free upgrades to meet voter ID laws. Donors also step up to cover costs

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION -- Emily Jones poses for a photo with a new Purdue student ID that features an expiration date that allows the ID card to be used as a voter ID, Friday, Sept. 6, 2019 in West Lafayette.(Photo: Nikos Frazier, Photo Illustration by Nikos Frazier | Journal & Courier)

WEST LAFAYETTE – Emily Jones might be the only Purdue student on campus with a student ID good enough to use at Greater Lafayette polling places in the November election.

Jones, a senior from Mulberry, went to the student ID office two weeks ago prepared to shell out $10 for a new card – this one with an expiration date that had been missing on her old ID and that suddenly and essentially made Purdue’s student IDs worthless as documentation on Election Day.

For Jones, a student director of the Purdue Votes Coalition, the exercise was more of an experiment – “Just to make sure it worked,” she said – ahead of the campus organization’s voter registration drive later in September, before November’s municipal elections. The usual questions on campus sidewalks – Are you registered to vote? Would you like to be? – were about to come with an addendum: Do you have the right sort of ID?

“Because your Purdue ID probably isn’t going to work,” Jones said. “That’s what we’re up against after this summer.”

This summer was when Tippecanoe County walked back a policy that dated to 2008, the first year of Indiana’s voter ID law, that gave election officials here a workaround to qualify Purdue student IDs, even if they didn’t meet the letter of the new state law.

This summer also was when Purdue offered to update student IDs so they complied for the first time with state voter ID requirements. The catch: The rollout of newly minted, polling place-ready IDs wouldn’t start en masse until the freshman class arrived in fall 2020. Anyone else would have to pay a $10 fee, a discount from the usual $25 replacement fee.

This fall semester, though? So far, as of Friday, Purdue had no record of a student coming for an updated ID since they became available in August, according Tim Doty, university spokesman. (Jones said her ID wound up being replaced at no charge due to wear and tear.)

“We have a lot of work to do,” Jones said.

Help could be on the way on a couple of fronts, though neither comes with guarantees.

The first one: On Monday, the University Senate, a faculty-led governing body on campus, will consider a measure meant to pressure Purdue’s administration into waiving the $10 fee “for students who require them for voter identification purposes.”

Audrey Ruple, chair of the University Senate’s Equity and Diversity Committee, said committee members took up the question this summer, after the Tippecanoe County Election Board pulled back on its practice of allowing Purdue student IDs at the polls.

Indiana’s voter ID law, which went into effect in 2008, says a student ID from a state school in Indiana may be used if it meets requirements for other forms of ID acceptable at the polls. That means it must include four things: a photo, a name, an expiration date that shows it is current and be issued by the state of Indiana or the U.S. government. In most cases, a driver’s license, passport, state-issued ID through the BMV or military identification are used.

That first year of the voter ID law, Tippecanoe County election officials started using a workaround to allow Purdue students – especially those from out of state – to use their campus IDs, even if it didn’t have an expiration date printed on the cards. (In fall 2018, roughly 34 percent of undergraduates were from outside Indiana, eligible to vote in elections from their university addresses but likely without an Indiana driver’s license and perhaps without passports.) Election officials instead used campus records to confirm that a student was enrolled at Purdue. That amounted to a suitable substitute for an expiration date on an ID card.

The Tippecanoe County Election Board, on advice from state election officials that the workaround might never have been legal, decided to give up that process.

The move toward a new Purdue ID – a process that will take the next four years to roll out, in full, given that IDs issued to freshmen are expected to last an entire Purdue career – was a direct response by the university.

Ruple said the University Senate committee wanted to remove obstacles that might keep students from voting, “and having to pay for an identification card may very well be considered an obstacle for some of our students.”

“I have not discussed this issue with President Mitch Daniels, but I believe he has a strong record of commitment to civic engagement,” Ruple said. “His recent request that students take a civics literacy exam as a requirement for graduation speaks to the value he places on our students and graduates taking seriously their civic responsibilities.”

If the university takes a pass at that one, here’s a second option: Donors have been coming forward to cover the costs for fresh student IDs.

That includes Donna Riley and Dave Stein, who pledged $2,000 in matching funds in a quiet crowdfunding effort.

“The thought on this from the start was, hey, look, regardless of the motives for questioning this ID, the end result is hopefully now we get some clarification and a fix in place,” Stein, who works for a company in the Purdue Research Park, said. Riley is a department head at Purdue.

“In the meantime, if there’s anything we can do for the students who are in between, let’s just help them out and move on,” Stein said. “My biggest concern is that you might have students who have some interest in local politics and voting, or might be encouraged to do that by Purdue Votes or something like that, but then find you have to get your ID switched out and you add the $10 fee on top of that , it gets pretty easy to opt out. … We remember what it was like to be a college student and what $10 means.”

How that would work is still up in the air.

Stein said he was hoping to let the League of Women Voters of Greater Lafayette oversee the fund, which he said was intended to carry over into the 2020 president election year and beyond, when student interest in voting likely will be greater on campus than during this year’s municipal elections.

Ken Jones, with the League of Women Voters, said the group tried to set up the fund with the university. He said the university’s student ID office was leery about overseeing the fund, starting with questions about how university officials would determine when a card replacement was truly for voting purposes.

Doty said the university was “aware of a local organization that is interested in finding a way to reimburse students.”

“We have encouraged them to administer the program and to move forward if they are able to do so,” Doty said.

Ken Jones said the League is looking into that.

“We think we can, but we want to be sure,” Ken Jones said. “This is a five-year problem, the way it works out.”

Emily Jones said voter drives would go on. City elections are coming up. In those, four Purdue students are running for seats in three West Lafayette City Council districts, including one that is primarily made up of on-campus residence halls.

She said Purdue Votes members will do their best to explain how Purdue students can meet shifting voter ID rules in Tippecanoe County.

The job would be easier if the university bends to faculty demands expected Monday and waives the $10 fee. Or if the red tape clears for donors who want to help.

Either way, she said she doesn’t expect to be the only one on campus with a new Purdue ID.

“The Purdue ID office has been really helpful and wants to help us deal with this,” Emily Jones said. “But there are a lot of hoops. Anything we can do to make it easier for students to vote, I hope we can do it.”

► WHAT YOU CAN DO: The general election will be Nov. 5. The deadline to register to vote is Oct. 7. To register through the Indiana Secretary of State, go to indianavoters.in.gov. The site also includes links to check or update voter registration information, who is on your ballot and ways to meet Indiana's voter ID law.

Reach Dave Bangert at 765-420-5258 or at dbangert@jconline.com. Follow on Twitter: @davebangert.